Category: Jordan
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Gerasa-Jerash
Gerasa-Jerash Only a stone’s throw away: Walk down the South Decumanus road of Roman Gerasa into present day Jerash – or vice versa – and you bridge a time span of two thousand years in just a few minutes. Actually this switching in time is nothing extraordinary. It happens with every visit to historical monuments…
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Migrating birds
Migrating birds The play of reeds, water and light in last week’s photo pleased me because of its abstract nature. In the same way Devrim Erbil must have been pleased by the sight of a chaotic swarm of migrating birds and took it up as the subject of his painting. Abstraction inspired by nature. Photo…
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Salty beach
Salty beach My old Hachette guide tells me that very long ago, before the Tertiary Era, the Dead Sea was an expanse of sweet water lying above (!) the level of the Mediterranean. After the dislocation of the valley of the Jordan it sank to great depths and came into contact with salt deposits deep…
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Dead at the Dead Sea
Dead at the Dead Sea This luxury resort at the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea looks pretty dead itself. Tastefully laid out in a colour scheme that pleasantly matches the backdrop of the Dead Sea landscape, it does look rather sterile. There’s no living soul to be seen; even the palm trees look artificial and…
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Witness from Baghdad
Witness from Baghdad The heads of the women are blurred and their faces hidden in veils. But their eyes see. We see eyes that see. Eyes that have seen. And now the eyes have directed their penetrating look at us, confronting us onlookers. Remember last week’s photo? REMEMBER? We shall remember, Halim Al Karim! Photos…
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Remember
Remember REMEMBER: written in capital letters on a wall on a hill in Amman, Jordan. I saw it from the hill opposite whilst visiting two modern art galleries located there. REMEMBER: is it an artistic statement; is it connected to the artworks in the gallery spaces and buildings? That could well be the case. As…
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Patriotism
Patriotism I was once given a serious telling-off by a young boy in India about my alleged lack of patriotism. Everyone in India always wants to know where you’re from. As soon as they heard I was Dutch, they would often tell me the story of how a little boy in the Netherlands had saved…
καιρός remembered 